James Corden and Mathew Horne: Interview

Mathew Horne and James Corden, the stars of Gavin & Stacey have graduated to
their own comedy sketch show. They talk about how the series is the most
'gay friendly' around plus the critic's response to their hosting of The
Brits.

Once you become famous, people can sometimes treat you in odd ways. James Corden, who has won awards and praise galore for his BBC sitcom Gavin & Stacey, was walking out of his flat with his girlfriend one day when he bumped into someone he vaguely remembered from childhood, a school friend’s brother.

‘He shouted, from the top of the stairs, “CORDEN, YOU ------!”’ says Corden, laughing as he imitates the man’s cheerful upper-class bellow. ‘This is a guy I didn’t even know that well, so it was just a bit inappropriate. He kept doing this thing of saying something really awful, then paying me a compliment. He’d go, “HOW THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN, YOU PIECE OF ----? GOD, YOU LOOK WELL.” And, “---- ME, YOU’RE DOING WELL, YOU LUCKY LITTLE ----. WHAT ARE YOU DRIVING?” You’ve just called me a ----, and now you’re asking me what car I’ve got...’

It was a bemusing experience, but at least the 30-year-old actor got something out of it: a character for Horne & Corden, the BBC Three sketch show he’s made with his Gavin & Stacey co-star, Mathew Horne. The character is Xander, a chummy but crassly over-familiar upper-class oaf: in the first episode, on Tuesday this week, we’ll see Xander embarrassing an old friend from boarding school in front of the friend’s wife and children.

Horne and Corden are becoming well-known as a double-act. They presented the Brit Awards with Kylie Minogue last month, and are co-starring in a comedy film, in cinemas later this month, called Lesbian Vampire Killers. They met three years ago when Horne, who’s also 30, was cast in Gavin & Stacey, which Corden had written with Ruth Jones (they’re writing a third and final series now).

‘James got my number off a mutual friend and texted me – I rang him back and we talked for about an hour,’ says Horne. ‘We clicked straight away. We almost instantly began creating themes and characters and situations, and it’s culminated in this sketch show.’ They’re close friends outside work. For their most recent birthdays, Horne gave Corden a Mac Book laptop, and Corden gave Horne an Alexander McQueen suitcase, gifts which obviously reflect their professional success as well as the closeness of their friendship: Gavin & Stacey has won two Baftas and four British Comedy Awards.

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Among the other characters in the series are Jonny and Lee Miller, two absurd ‘magicians’; we also see an awkward meeting in a gym changing room between Spider-Man (Corden) and Superman (Horne), and a spoof of Ricky Gervais (played by Corden) being very irritating on a film set. ‘We felt quite anxious about that sketch, wondering if it was something we should be doing,’ says Corden, who hastily points out that both he and Horne are fans of Gervais, and that Gervais is a lovely man, and that they’re sure he won’t mind.

Indeed, although some sketches are cruder in tone than the family-friendly Gavin & Stacey, the two say they’d hate to think their comedy would offend anyone. The believability of this stance is tested, however, by a sketch in the first episode, a spoof of homoerotic adverts for aftershave: the slogan at the end declares that the aftershaves in the ad, ‘Horne’ and ‘Corden’, were created by ‘Fag Le Jay Jean-Peterson’. In the current climate of censoriousness, it’s surely asking for trouble to use the word ‘fag’ when making fun of something camp.

Corden sounds astonished. ‘Oh my God, it doesn’t come from that at all,’ he says. ‘“Fag Le Jay Jean-Peterson” is just an in-joke between me and my friends. When I was in The History Boys [Alan Bennett’s play], Dominic Cooper [who played Dakin] kind of invented this whole language. You’d say, “How are you feeling?” and he’d say, “Absolutely anti-bovine.” Instead of saying, “I’m going out for a fag,” he’d say, “I’m going out for a Fag Le Jay Jean-Peterson.” That’s all it is. We used it in that sketch because it sounds like one of those names, like Yves St Laurent. Our show is one of the most gay-friendly shows you could ever imagine.’

Another sketch, it must be said, is about a shrilly camp war reporter (Horne) who is more interested in the soldiers’ legs than in the war itself; viewers can decide for themselves how gay-friendly this joke is.

But Corden and Horne know that, these days, they just have to put up with press criticism; their efforts at the Brits didn’t go down universally well (‘Corden off the premises,’ wrote The Sun’s TV critic). They say it didn’t bother them.

‘I used to get upset by reviews, but let’s not forget, reviewers are the only people who don’t get reviewed,’ says Horne, adding that it was ‘an almost impossible gig: it’s an enormous room with 10,000 people: half of them want to scream and half just want to get drunk. Nobody really wants to laugh.’

Corden sounds breezier. ‘I had a really good time, my family had a good time, and that for me made it a success,’ he says. ‘If you start to judge everything by what people write about it... You can’t live like that. Nicholas de Jongh is a brilliant, respected theatre critic. He wrote a scathing review of The History Boys. Does that mean it’s bad? No. Did it affect Alan Bennett? Absolutely not.’

He’s taking the same attitude to reviews of Horne & Corden (which should, in any case, be much more enthusiastic: the Gervais spoof in particular is inspired).

‘I hope people enjoy it,’ he says. ‘But in the grand scheme of things, it’s only a TV show. If it’s brilliant, great. But if it’s not, nobody’s life’s in danger.’